While most racing series have already packed up their scoresheets (Are those a thing?) and teams have settled in for long-winter overhauls, the 24 Hours of LeMons has a considerably shorter offseason. This weekend’s “Houston, We Have a Problem” race at MSR Houston marks the next-to-last—some might even say “penultimate”—LeMons race of 2016. MSR was one of the first additions to the LeMons calendar outside of California, holding a race in 2008 and has been on the calendar annually (and often with multiple races) since. This race should feature unusually pleasant, if cloudy, weather. That said, rain is never out of the question near the Gulf of Mexico. You can get the entire unofficial entry list here, but we’ll give a brief rifling-through of the entry list after the jump.

An NHRA Funny Car engine makes up to 11,000 horsepower. That’s a good place to start here because it’s an incredible number that is really hard to wrap your head around, like the size of the universe or the sticker price on a Volkswagen Touareg. I only mention that because the exhaust gases expelled from an 11,000-horsepower engine exit the engine at extraordinary velocity. In fact, Jimmy Prock’s Funny Car team recognized this in 2015 and wondered what would happen if he had the crew pointed the end of the engine’s exhaust headers more toward the back of the car than perpendicular to the direction of travel. What happened? Lots of records, that’s what.

I’m cheap. I don’t pay for even basic cable so I’m frequently left to tend to the scraps of highlights packages and replays. So when I record The DFL Show, I’m usually relying highlights shows and so forth to recap my racing. However, I usually try to catch all the racing I can that’s streamed for free on the web with a couple of exceptions (I forked over the cash for pay-per-view V8 Supercars and World Endurance Championship this year). While I no longer have time to preview the weekends here and give a heads-up on all the free racing, I can share with you some of the racing I tend to watch for free in a series of (hopefully) weekly posts. Let’s start with the European Le Mans Series (ELMS).

Just fair dinkum here: This video has Not-Safe-For-Work (NSFW) language. Not just some NSFW language, mind you; this video has all of it. If you’re not familiar with Australian national treasure Ozzy Man, he’s a bloke from Down Under who does voiceover work on popular (and occasionally unpopular) videos with some characteristically colorful Australian slang liberally applied. In other words, he has all the four-letter words and he’s not afraid to use them, particularly when testing out a new racin’ vidya game.

Not long ago, I wrote occasionally about former racetracks in the United States that have largely disappeared. Those primarily covered temporary circuits set up on closed public roads in the early days of the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) while some permanent circuits were set up. Some of those that I’ve covered—Brynfan Tyddyn in Pennsylvania, Lake Garnett in Kansas, and Las Ochas Millas in New Mexico—were spectacularly dangerous. As a result, purpose-built circuits like Road America and Watkins Glen International started to become the rule of the day. One of these tracks was Meadowdale International Raceway in Carpentersville, Illinois, just northwest of Chicago. Unlike most forgotten tracks, Meadowdale is often remembered today and even more often visited in its current guise, Raceway Woods Forest Preserve. I visited Raceway Wood a couple years ago and then did nothing with the photos. Until today!

Hey, it’s me! I haven’t dropped by these parts in a while, but I told that tall guy who talks about butt wipes at the beginning of his videos (Jeff still does that, right?) that I wanted to write a post or two a week because I rather like this part of the internet and miss it. So here you go: A post. This one comes courtesy of a great 24 Hours of LeMons Supreme Court bribe: a 1940s Sinclair Gasoline Tour Map of the United States.

In case you were living under a rock in the automotive world last weekend, you missed one of the most unbelievable 24 Hours of Le Mans finishes in history. Nay, one of the most unbelievable racing sports finishes of all time. Just as the race-leading #5 Toyota TS050 was about to start the final lap of a triumphant and long-overdue victory, cruel fate intervened and the car ground to a halt in front of pit lane. In front of 200,000 people. The #2 Porsche flashed past and Toyota—who was on pace to be just the second Japanese manufacturer to win at Le Mans (Mazda did it in 1991)—had lost in shocking fashion. Click through to hear the Japanese commentary team convey an entire country of racing fans’ devastation.

Look, race cars are not popular with even the general auto enthusiast public and this one is perhaps even less popular than most. In my own head, I imagine this akin to Time Magazine nominating divisive or antagonistic People of the Year not because I dislike the Spark-Renault SRT_01. Rather, I see it as an object of poignant reflection on motorsports’ present and future.